These filmmakers are wise beyond their years

If you can judge a movie by its trailer, college sophomores Gabi Chennisi and Abigail Hook are ready for Hollywood.

Gabi, who attends Rice University, and Abigail, who goes to Harvard, traveled to Kazakhstan last summer to visit Abigail’s parents. But the visit was really only a sidelight of their trip. Their main goal was to make a documentary movie about Kazakhstan’s babushkas, or grandmothers.

Abigail’s mom knew from her volunteer work there that many of the women in their 70s, 80s and 90s lived alone, having survived their spouses and even their children. As a group, the elderly women lived in substandard housing and struggled to pay their bills and obtain health care. Mostly they were forgotten by their fellow citizens, who were struggling themselves.

Early on Gabi and Abigail thought they were making a movie about health care, food distribution, policy and politics. But everything changed when they actually interviewed the babushkas. That’s when the girls realized that the stories of love, loss and survival were universal, and that the movie wasn’t about differences but similarities.

“The things the babushkas talked about – love, he asked me to the movies, fear of dying, fear of being alone–that’s what every human goes through,” Gabi said. “The women wanted to tell their stories.”

It was a match made in the Middle Lane, featuring young adults, frail adults, and the generation in the middle cheering them on.

If you want to see the movie, titled Babushka, it’s showing at 7 p.m. April 26 the Rice Media Center on the Rice campus. Admission is free.